Lottie Lyell was a much-loved silent movie star in the early days of cinema in Australia. She was also an accomplished writer of scenarios, film director and film editor. Quietly working alongside director, Raymond Longford, her considerable influence and contribution to the 28 feature films they made together was well known in film circles, yet often went unnoticed by the public, and un-credited on screen. However, in 1916 Lyell began receiving co writing credits and, before her untimely death from tuberculosis aged 36, she was receiving sole scenario writing, co directing and film editing credits. Lyell grew up in the era of the suffragettes and many of the films she and Longford made had spirited young women as central characters. She was the leading player in most of the films, did all her own stunts and was an accomplished horsewoman. Lyell and Longford were partners on and off screen, but never married and many of the films they made were about women who step outside of convention and consequently suffer at the hands of men or the law. Their most successful film The Sentimental Bloke (Longford 1919) was shot on the streets of Sydney and depicted working class life with a documentary quality and a naturalistic performance style that was unusual for the time. Lyell, who played the lovable Doreen, was a trained stage actress, but she clearly understood the demands of the new medium. In this paper I will focus on Lyells work as a scenario writer and argue that the knowledge she brought as an actress, and a film editor, informed her skills as a writer and a director, and what has been described as Longfords understanding of film language can arguably be attributed to the silent work of a woman whose growing understanding of the new medium increasingly informed the photoplays she was a major contributor to.

en_US

dc.relation.ispartof

Screening the Past

en_US

dc.title

Lottie Lyell: the silent work of an early Australian scenario writer

en_US

dc.type

Journal Article

utslib.description.version

Published

en_US

utslib.for

1902 Film, Television And Digital Media

en_US

utslib.for

2103 Historical Studies

en_US

utslib.for

1902 Film, Television And Digital Media

en_US

utslib.for

2103 Historical Studies

en_US

pubs.embargo.period

Not known

en_US

pubs.organisational-group

/University of Technology Sydney

pubs.organisational-group

/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

pubs.organisational-group

/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Creative Writing Program

Lottie Lyell was a much-loved silent movie star in the early days of cinema in Australia. She was also an accomplished writer of scenarios, film director and film editor. Quietly working alongside director, Raymond Longford, her considerable influence and contribution to the 28 feature films they made together was well known in film circles, yet often went unnoticed by the public, and un-credited on screen. However, in 1916 Lyell began receiving co writing credits and, before her untimely death from tuberculosis aged 36, she was receiving sole scenario writing, co directing and film editing credits. Lyell grew up in the era of the suffragettes and many of the films she and Longford made had spirited young women as central characters. She was the leading player in most of the films, did all her own stunts and was an accomplished horsewoman. Lyell and Longford were partners on and off screen, but never married and many of the films they made were about women who step outside of convention and consequently suffer at the hands of men or the law. Their most successful film The Sentimental Bloke (Longford 1919) was shot on the streets of Sydney and depicted working class life with a documentary quality and a naturalistic performance style that was unusual for the time. Lyell, who played the lovable Doreen, was a trained stage actress, but she clearly understood the demands of the new medium. In this paper I will focus on Lyells work as a scenario writer and argue that the knowledge she brought as an actress, and a film editor, informed her skills as a writer and a director, and what has been described as Longfords understanding of film language can arguably be attributed to the silent work of a woman whose growing understanding of the new medium increasingly informed the photoplays she was a major contributor to.

OPUS Help

OPUS

OPUS (Open Publications of UTS Scholars) is the UTS institutional repository. It showcases the research of UTS staff and postgraduate students to a global audience. For you, as a researcher, OPUS increases the visibility and accessibility of your research by making it openly available regardless of where you choose to publish.

Items in OPUS are enhanced with high quality metadata and seeded to search engines such as Google Scholar as well as being linked to your UTS research profile, increasing discoverability and opportunities for citation of your work and collaboration. In addition, works in OPUS are preserved for long-term access and discovery.

The UTS Open Access Policy requires UTS research outputs to be openly available via OPUS. Depositing your work in OPUS also assists you in complying with ARC, NHMRC and other funder Open Access policies. Providing Open Access to your research outputs through OPUS not only ensures you comply with these important policies, but increases opportunities for other researchers to cite and build upon your work.

OPUS archives UTS research submitted for the UTS Research Output Collection (UTS ROC) and Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). It also stores digital theses and forms of scholarship that do not usually see formal publication.

How can you deposit works in OPUS?

When you claim (or enter) your research in Symplectic Elements, simply upload a copy of your work which can be made openly available. Symplectic provides information on which version of your work to upload. If you are unsure, please supply a copy of the Accepted Manuscript version. Ensure you check the box to "agree to the OPUS license terms".

Once uploaded, your works are automatically sent to OPUS and placed temporarily in Closed Access until reviewed by UTS Library staff.